


Birthday

by Rakefetzyz



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Presents, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 19:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16165244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rakefetzyz/pseuds/Rakefetzyz
Summary: It's Matt's birthday, the first after Midland Circle. Foggy and Karen meet at Josie's to reminisce and grieve together.





	Birthday

Karen was waiting at the bar when he reached Josie's. They hugged briefly, then brought their drinks to a back table where they could talk. 

“Thanks for coming tonight,” Foggy began.

“Some things are more important than a deadline,” she answered, placing her coat on the back of her chair. “Just don’t tell Ellison I said that.”

Foggy could only manage a weak smile. “We didn’t celebrate his birthday last year and it was the last one before…”

“Last year he was behaving like an obnoxious…” She left the epithet unspoken because it was Matt's birthday tonight and Matt was dead. “He left you in the lurch with the Frank Castle case and he was alienating us both. You had no way of knowing he would get trapped under a fallen building.”

But the defense attorney refused to cooperate with his own defense. “I knew about his double life. I should have realized any birthday could be his last.”

“Tell me about his other birthdays,” she suggested, hoping it might help Foggy cope with the guilt and the grief.

Wrong tactic. 

“The first year we were in law school I missed his birthday, too...”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foggy could have kicked himself. How could he not have thought to ask when his roommate’s birthday was? 

But it didn’t come up until Foggy's own birthday came around in January. He brought Matt to the birthday dinner at his parents. By this time the whole Nelson clan knew his roommate pretty well. Matt had no family, so Foggy had brought him along for Thanksgiving and Christmas too.

Even then it was a cousin who asked at the birthday dinner.

“Oh, my birthday’s in November,” Matt answered.

November! It was two months too late. Now Foggy would have to wait almost ten months to celebrate Matt's birthday with him. And the guy had no one else to celebrate it. He had no folks, no other close friends and no romantic relationships that lasted long enough for birthdays.

Foggy thought he should have guessed that Matt was a Scorpio. The obstinacy, the fierce determination, the Scorpio tendency to turn his stinger on himself sometimes, were all there. 

He did ask Matt about his Zodiac sign once. But Matt firmly replied that he didn't believe in astrology. Foggy assumed it was a Catholic thing. Still, he should have guessed and at least known the general time of year when Matt’s birthday fell.

The following November he tried to make it up to Matt. He brought him to a birthday dinner at his parents and then took him out for a night on the town.

When they got back to the dorm, a little tipsy, Foggy wondered what Matt's earlier birthdays had been like. “Did you celebrate when you were a kid?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Matt answered. “My dad didn’t have much, but he always did something for my birthday. He would get two cupcakes at a bakery and put candles on mine to blow out. He always got me a present too, usually a warm sweater or something I needed for the winter. Some years he got a cheap puzzle or book from the discount store too. Before my grandmother died she always sent me a card with ten dollars in it. Of course, some years I contributed the money to help cover our rent.” 

But Matt had a wistful smile on his face when he told that to Foggy.

“My tenth birthday was special. It was after the accident and before my dad got killed. My dad got me a deck of playing cards. They were regular cards but they also had Braille markings that told the suit and number or rank of each card. He had thought to ask my teacher for visual impairments where to get it. My dad relaxed the homework rule just that once and agreed I could finish before breakfast the next morning. We ate the birthday cupcakes and then sat at the table playing gin rummy for a while. He even taught me to play poker. We didn’t play for money. We used match sticks.”

“Sounds nice,” Foggy mumbled.

“I was still learning to cope with blindness and with all the changes the accident caused,” Matt continued. “But my tenth birthday was the best one I ever had.”

“What about the orphanage?” Foggy asked. “Did they celebrate your birthday there?”

“Yes, but there were lots of kids. Three or four birthdays every month, sometimes more. The nuns couldn’t do much for each one but they celebrated. There was a small cake at dinner for the kids assigned to the birthday boy or girl's table. And everyone sang Happy Birthday.”

“Did you have presents?”

“Most of the kids still had family outside the orphanage, a mom or dad, grandparents or an aunt who sent them a gift. But a few of us had no one. The nuns would go through the donation boxes and look for something in good condition they could wrap as a gift for us.”

Foggy knew Matt couldn’t see the expression on his face, but somehow Matt must have sensed his reaction.

“It wasn’t that bad, Foggy. One year I got a winter jacket that smelled and felt brand new. Some kid must have had a growth spurt before he even got to wear it. I had the jacket for two years before I got a growth spurt too and passed it down to a smaller kid.”

Foggy thought of his own birthdays growing up. There was always a big family dinner that included not only his parents and sister but whatever aunts, uncles and cousins who could come that evening. He always brought a few friends from school too. Usually Brett Mahoney was one of them despite their supposedly being sworn enemies since preschool.

After dinner they had birthday cake and ice cream. And presents. Sometimes he got a game like Monopoly or Clue. There were big Lego and Playmobil sets. One year he got a Walkman and tapes, and when that got outdated, a Discman with CDs. Once he got a skateboard. All this was going on in the same years that the orphanage nuns were going through donation boxes trying to find a present for Matt.

“It’s okay, Foggy, really.” Matt must have sensed his reaction again. “And you gave me a great birthday this year. Thanks, buddy.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karen's hand on his arm brought Foggy back to the present. “He was a stubborn son of a…,” she caught herself again, “and he sucked at relationships. But something about him was so endearing.”

Foggy nodded, fighting back tears. 

“I still have the key to his apartment,” he said finally. “Let’s go there now and go up on his roof.”

They climbed the stairs to Matt’s loft. The electricity was turned off but there was still some paper in the office area that Matt made for himself when he started working from home. Foggy helped himself to paper and Karen got a pen from her purse. They both wrote a birthday message on the paper.

“Should we have written it in Braille, do you think?” Foggy asked. 

“I don’t know,” Karen said, “but the Braille printer won’t work with no electricity.”

“He had a manual Braille writer, too.” Foggy said and found it on a corner of the desk. 

He placed the paper in, the way Matt had shown him once in law school, and wrote “Happy Birthday" in Braille. 

They looked at each other and headed for the stairs that led to the roof. 

When they got there they ripped the paper into tiny pieces and dropped them over the edge of the roof.

“Happy Birthday, Matt,” Karen whispered.

“Happy Birthday, buddy,” Foggy added under his breath. 

Then they stood together in the chilly night air watching the tiny white pieces drift slowly away.


End file.
